Neat! Is it safe, Elspeth? I am so darn leery of buying stuff online ... Do you give PP your bank-card information or .... what? You can PM me if you wish so we don't go too far OT.

Thanks so much,

-- Abbie

It's been safe so far. The worst thing is the spoof messages you get pretending that there are problems with your account so you'll send them your password. But you get that everywhere you sign up; I get these annoying spoof messages appearing to come from eBay and Amazon on a fairly regular basis. My ISP usually flags them as spam but a few get through. It isn't hard to tell the spam from genuine messages, though. Usually, anyway.

You can sign up with PayPal by giving them a credit card number, and then all purchases are paid via the credit card. They only let you do that for a total of $2000 (I think) and then you have to provide them with a bank account number to tie your PayPal account to. You can still pay with your credit card when you've done that, but you have the option of letting them take the money from your bank account. When I needed to tie my PayPal account to a bank account, we opened a bank account specially at a different bank from the one where we have our household account, and we only keep a small amount of money in it. That way, in the unlikely event that someone does hack into PayPal and manage to steal people's information and decrypt it, they can't do much damage to our bank accounts.

Maybe her objective was to show us the other side of the DRF, that absolutely exists, there is bound to be more than moonshine and roses as in every family. I have only read little pieces of the book, but I think she has done a good job.

Yes, but allow me to quote a bit from Tina Brown's book about Diana (p.459, Anchor books paperback edition of 2008): Situation is that Piers Morgan of the News of the World scooped the information that Diana had made nuisance calls to her lover Oliver Hoare. His boss Rupert Murdoch calls him after Diana told Richard Kay that the story was untrue and he duly printed it in the Daily Mail.

Quote:

Morgan was in the shower when Murdoch called him. On the phone from New York, the media mogul told his editor, "The poor girl is cracking up. Give her a bit of peace."

And I thought on reading this: WHAT?

But, alas, Brown continues in a very revealing way about how people like Murdoch, Morgan and Villemann work as journalists:

Quote:

Just kidding.

And describes how Murdoch told Morgan to expose Diana as a liar in order to sell more papers....

Why do I quote this? Because I got the impression that Villemann is as well one of the woolves who in a cynical way just would love to be able to expose Mary and Frederick. One who seeks the confidence and trust of people close to Mary in the hope that they start to talk to her and tell her as much as possible about the CP couple. One who proudly tells that after the publication of her book the RF started a "witch hunt" for her sources.
Does she think for a moment why they Royals did that? At least here in her numerous postings she didn't. But I have quite an idea about how it must feel to live a life in the public spotlight and than someone comes and tries to find out all about your last rest of privacy as well. Mary came from Australia - she had to leave her trusted friends back home and had to make new ones in Denmark. Now she must question each and any of them if he or she is willing to tell the likes of Villemann all they learn about the private Mary. How can she feel comfortable in her new home under such circumstances?

If this happened to a normal citizen, it would be called stalking, spying and prying, but as Villemann wrote here, she believes she owns the Royals as they live on public money. Like a self-made public prosecutor she requested weekly schedules of the CP couple in order to prove that they don't spent enough time working for the public who funds them - now who are they that they have to stand to attention for any self-proclaimed campaigner against their way to breathe life in the ancient monarchy of Denmark.

In my humble opinion Villemann's claim that she does all that prying and spying in order to get the information she needs to inform the public that the monarchy as it is is bad and must change is only her own spin on the fact that she's just a reporter hoping for a big scoop that will make her money. Because I seriously doubt that with Frederick and Mary there is such a hidden secret of incredible consequence to be found like it was with Nixon's Watergate involvement.No Pulitzer Prize to be won with "scandalous" stories about these two IMHO. So where is the reason who sanctifies the means in this case?

__________________'To dare is to lose one step for but a moment, not to dare is to lose oneself forever' - Crown Prince Frederick of Denmark in a letter to Miss Mary Donaldson as stated by them on their official engagement interview.

IMHO it's not the book that get's discussed in this topic, everybody is after Villemann and how she got her information. There are countless other book about Royalty with (maybe questionable) information and no one is afther their authors. I'm not defending Trine, but is it something personal for a lot of posters here??

IMHO it's not the book that get's discussed in this topic, everybody is after Villemann and how she got her information. There are countless other book about Royalty with (maybe questionable) information and no one is afther their authors. I'm not defending Trine, but is it something personal for a lot of posters here??

I don't think everybody is after Villemann; but Villemann herself has used this board as one big advertisement stunt for her own gain - to sell as many books as possible - and the bragging manner she has conducted herself in this thread, taking credit for the most unbelievable things, means that she must necessarily get some negative responses - not necessarily to her book but to her constant and indelicate promotion of herself.

Jo of Palatine - What an awsome and well-written post

__________________Some people say that cats are sneaky, evil, and cruel. True, and they have many other fine qualities as well.

IMHO it's not the book that get's discussed in this topic, everybody is after Villemann and how she got her information. There are countless other book about Royalty with (maybe questionable) information and no one is afther their authors. I'm not defending Trine, but is it something personal for a lot of posters here??

Ah, but then again Villemann is the only author of a (controversial) Royal book to sign up and post on line under her own name. As a consequence the whole discussion cannot help but be "personal".

It's called publicity, and there is no such thing as bad publicity . Forum members on this thread have informed us that they now can't wait to actually buy her book! Publicity sells books!

__________________MARG"Words ought to be a little wild, for they are assaults of thoughts on the unthinking." - JM Keynes

Question for Trine Villemann about Princess Marie nee Cavallier: What is your opinion about the newcomer's chances of not divorcing Joachim? This couple is being marketed as having a lot more in common than Joachim & Alexandra ever had.

My guess would be the timing. This book came out last year in Denmark, before Joachim and Marie's wedding.

Quote:

Question for Trine Villemann about Princess Marie nee Cavallier: What is your opinion about the newcomer's chances of not divorcing Joachim? This couple is being marketed as having a lot more in common than Joachim & Alexandra ever had.

Thanks

Could I ask you to please go and post this question in the Danish forum, where I'm sure Trine will be able to find it? We're trying to keep the topic of this thread on the book.

Yes, but allow me to quote a bit from Tina Brown's book about Diana (p.459, Anchor books paperback edition of 2008): Situation is that Piers Morgan of the News of the World scooped the information that Diana had made nuisance calls to her lover Oliver Hoare. His boss Rupert Murdoch calls him after Diana told Richard Kay that the story was untrue and he duly printed it in the Daily Mail.

And I thought on reading this: WHAT?

But, alas, Brown continues in a very revealing way about how people like Murdoch, Morgan and Villemann work as journalists:

And describes how Murdoch told Morgan to expose Diana as a liar in order to sell more papers....

Why do I quote this? Because I got the impression that Villemann is as well one of the woolves who in a cynical way just would love to be able to expose Mary and Frederick.

There's nothing wrong with wolves, you know....

However, having said that, and even if you want to call them hyenas , I tend to disagree at least on this particular point. I was getting pretty tired, and I know quite a few other people were too, of the way Diana's pals in the press spun everything so she was the sweet innocent victim of everyone else. In this case, not only did she and her pals deny that she'd made the nuisance calls, but they blamed someone else for it - a boy who had been identified by enough detail for his actual identity to be known by someone wanting to do a bit of elementary detective work. I don't know if they were fingering a child so he couldn't actually get prosecuted or what, but IMO that was a pretty unforgivable thing to do, and I don't think the press should have just rolled over and given up.

I do agree that they were hounding Diana, but that's at least partly because they knew they had a market and people would pay over the odds for personal stories and photos of her. In a free-market economy, as long as you stay within the confines of the law, the supply-demand business takes over. Then all you have to rely on are privacy laws and whether their enforcement has teeth.

Quote:

One who seeks the confidence and trust of people close to Mary in the hope that they start to talk to her and tell her as much as possible about the CP couple. One who proudly tells that after the publication of her book the RF started a "witch hunt" for her sources.

Well, honestly, I'd hope that people genuinely close to Mary or the other royals would know better than to put their confidence and trust in any reporter. So far, and I'm not all that far through the book yet, I'd say that the lack of named sources is something of a weakness because there are so few actual named individuals. The royals are quite well placed to say "she made it up" because of this vagueness. In the British royal family, you even have people like Margaret Rhodes and Pamela Mountbatten saying somewhat less than complimentary things about some of the senior royals, so I assume it's possible to find someone who'll talk on the record. I don't know how common this sort of critical reporting is in Denmark, though, or whether the perception of the people around the royals is that this book really does constitute constructive criticism.

Quote:

If this happened to a normal citizen, it would be called stalking, spying and prying, but as Villemann wrote here, she believes she owns the Royals as they live on public money. Like a self-made public prosecutor she requested weekly schedules of the CP couple in order to prove that they don't spent enough time working for the public who funds them - now who are they that they have to stand to attention for any self-proclaimed campaigner against their way to breathe life in the ancient monarchy of Denmark.

Yes, but the point is that it wouldn't happen to a normal citizen because there's no market for the stories. There may be a combination of motives here. Rupert Murdoch is a republican and you always have to wonder whether his papers are going after the royals because it sells, because it undermines the monarchy, because certain royals are in his bad books or what. Could be all of the above. In some cases it probably is a case of a reporter trying to force the royal family into giving value for money because of a perception that they're becoming freeloaders and damaging the monarchy and the reporter is trying to stop the rot. In some cases the motives of some of the reporters and photographers is pretty clear, but in some it really isn't.

I don't remember the Abdication personally (I'm getting on in years but I'm not quite that far gone!), but I remember reading about the year-long nationwide news blackout on the King's affair with Mrs Simpson and being appalled. My mother and grandmother, on the other hand, were both perfectly OK with it and thought that the King's position required this sort of deferential treatment by the press, and that his affair was nobody else's business and that it was fine for the upper echelons of society to know about it but for ordinary people (which included my mother and grandmother) to be kept in the dark. My problem with that (apart from the cynicism of the class system in their attitude that in an apparent democracy the vast majority of people didn't matter) is that if an institution controls the press, sooner or later they'll take advantage and abuse their position. Unfortunately, when you have the profit motive there as well, the press are also more than likely to abuse their position when doing investigative journalism, but I think it's better to have a situation like that than one where one side gets pretty much free rein.

There seem to be rumblings all over Europe about the commitment and value of the younger generation of royals. In Britain, Denmark, and Spain in particular there seems to be the perception that while you have a dedicated and much loved monarch, the heir (or in the British case, the generation of William, Harry, Beatrice and Eugenie) is a spoiled lazy brat who wants the privileges without the responsibilities and isn't really supported by the people. William is a bit of a special case because of the Diana-Camilla factor, but there are still a fair few people wondering if he does anything other than go nightclubbing. Again, it could be the work of republican elements in the press or it could be reporters and photographers who are feeding the public's demand for celebrity news or what. But we're going to need reporters to ask hard questions about both the royals and other reporters or we could end up with the institution of the monarchy being seriously undermined. Whether you think Trine is one of the good reporters or one of the bad ones is another matter. I don't really know enough about the Danish royals or the Danish royal reporters to be able to tell for certain what anyone's motives are. All I can say about the book at this point is that most of it isn't about Mary, and I'm not sure why so many people are focussing on her. That last chapter of the book seems to have really unbalanced it.

I doubt very much that I sell any books being in this forum. You all seem to have made up your mind a looong time ago about, who is the good and who is the bad guy. As for putting my name out here?Why shouldn't ? I have nothing to hide! I have written a controversial book about the Danish Royal Family, a,IMO, true and honest account of what they are really like. I am very happy to discuss that without hiding behind a made up identity. Elspeth is right, there are rumblings in some monarchies in Europe, Denmark being one of them. My book is part of these Danish rumblings. Like it or not!

Trine, can you tell us anything about your new book, King of Greenland? Focus? Thanks

All I can say at the moment is, that it will probably be delayed, because - surprise, surprise - the Prime Minister's Office is VERY reluctant to give me access to certain papers under the Freedom of Information Act. Also, the palace seems not very keen to answer my questions either. But I wil get there in the end!

the Prime Minister's Office is VERY reluctant to give me access to certain papers under the Freedom of Information Act. Also, the palace seems not very keen to answer my questions either. But I wil get there in the end!

I doubt very much that I sell any books being in this forum. You all seem to have made up your mind a looong time ago about, who is the good and who is the bad guy. As for putting my name out here?Why shouldn't ? I have nothing to hide! I have written a controversial book about the Danish Royal Family, a,IMO, true and honest account of what they are really like. I am very happy to discuss that without hiding behind a made up identity. Elspeth is right, there are rumblings in some monarchies in Europe, Denmark being one of them. My book is part of these Danish rumblings. Like it or not!

Trine, rest assured ... You WILL sell a copy to me. I am going to send for it ASAP, I can assure you. I feel badly for you and the reception you have received herein. You have always had my support, for I have always appreciated your right to write honestly, and the degree to which you cannot reveal your sources, too.

As we've been asked to re-open the thread for actual book discussion, we're doing just that.

However, be aware that following the rules is NOT optional - and if the discussion cannot remain civil and on topic, the thread will be closed once more.

Furthermore, as the author is a member of these boards, and quite able to talk for herself; it would be appreciated if other members did not do the talking for her, or assume she's said/done something that she hasn't. Such posts will be deleted.

As we've been asked to re-open the thread for actual book discussion, we're doing just that.

However, be aware that following the rules is NOT optional - and if the discussion cannot remain civil and on topic, the thread will be closed once more.

Furthermore, as the author is a member of these boards, and quite able to talk for herself; it would be appreciated if other members did not do the talking for her, or assume she's said/done something that she hasn't. Such posts will be deleted.

On behalf of the Royal Library Mods, Norwegianne

Thanks, Norwegianne. "1015 Copenhagen K" has been selected by Majesty Magazine as Book of the Month in October.

Thanks, Norwegianne. "1015 Copenhagen K" has been selected by Majesty Magazine as Book of the Month in October.

Thank you, Norwegianne, for re-opening the Thread. I appreciate the reconsideration of the part of the Moderatours.
This thread is quite looooong, so it is a little hard, sometimes to know what Trine Villeman has said or not, but, I will surely do my best to not repeat anything, although I am human too ...

I have read this book twice, now. Honestly?
I liked the book.
I thought it was revealing enough without being bashing.
I think of Ms. Villeman as straining mostly to be discreet, whilst giving the reader something to nibble on, and keep him or her interested in reading further into the book. I thought her book could well have been more revealing, than it was, and came away thinking of The Danish Royals as being pretty much like my family, except (of course!) for their status, perks, income and priviledges. But, certainly imperfections exist everywhere, as we can now read.
I thought the book was fair and largely sympathetic and in favour of the continuation of a royal system, albeit one that is more modernised, democratic and not as mired in stultifying, out-dated traditions and practices.
Well done, Trine!